\n<\/p>\n
Grammy Award-winning musician, composer, and producer Wyclef Jean says the music industry is broken, which is why he\u2019s now involved with a startup, OpenWav, that\u2019s looking to give the power back to the artists. Through the OpenWav app, launched over the summer, artists can drop new music and exclusives, connect directly with fans, sell merch, host concerts, pop-ups, and listening parties, and more. <\/p>\n
Later, the startup plans to offer more assistance to artists using AI tools.<\/p>\n
Speaking at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference this week, Jean, now Chief Creative Officer at OpenWav, had harsh words for the state of the music industry, particularly criticizing the business model of streaming services.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re a new artist, the amount of streams that you have to [accumulate] to get $10,000 is literally a rip-off. So now you have a constant revolt,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Jean pointed to Cardi B as a recent example of the problem, saying that while people probably thought it was funny that she was on the street selling CDs and vinyl albums (which she did in a TikTok promoting her album), what she was really doing was showing how bad things have become for artists.<\/p>\n
To put things in perspective, OpenWav co-founder and CEO Jaeson Ma, who spoke alongside Jean at the event, said that, \u201cRight now on Spotify\u2026for $3,000 you have to hit 1 million streams.\u201d Ma is a media industry entrepreneur, investor, and advisor who has backed numerous startups, including Musical.ly (which became TikTok), Triller, Coinbase, Grab, and others, and co-founded multiple media companies and the NFT app OP3N.<\/p>\n
Ma explained that the industry\u2019s broken model is why the team at OpenWav is building a direct-to-fan music platform. <\/p>\n
Techcrunch event<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco<\/span> \u201cThe algorithms are not rewarding music,\u201d he noted, agreeing with a recent social media post from singer Lizzo, who complained about the lack of a \u201csong of the summer\u201d this year.<\/p>\n Ma then explained that what today\u2019s artists need is not a million listeners on Spotify, but rather 1,000 true fans.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you have 1,000 true fans that give you $10 a month \u2014 which is a Starbucks coffee times 1,000 \u2014 that\u2019s $120,000 a year as an independent music artist. Think about that.\u201d (Technically, it\u2019s $100,000 per year \u2014 he likely misspoke \u2014 but his point stands; there\u2019s room to monetize the direct-to-fan experience.)<\/p>\n \u201cSpotify is not paying you. Instagram, TikTok\u2019s not paying you. But your true fans will pay you. They\u2019ll buy your tickets. They\u2019ll buy your exclusive music \u2014 your music dropped first on OpenWav. They\u2019ll buy your merch. And if you\u2019re making that type of money \u2014 just 10 bucks a month \u2014 you can actually build a sustainable career,\u201d Ma said.<\/p>\n Of course, OpenWav isn\u2019t alone in thinking about turning \u201csuper fans\u201d into a revenue stream for artists. Spotify itself has been talking about building a super fan platform for some time, telling investors on its earnings calls that it aims to launch a new premium tier that would cater to fans who would get early access to concert tickets, more features, and other perks. The company has been negotiating with labels like Universal and Warner Music to make that happen. <\/p>\n OpenWav wouldn\u2019t necessarily be targeting major artists, as Spotify is, however. Instead, it would be going after indie artists and others just starting out.<\/p>\n The concept isn\u2019t entirely new. Spotify tried to enter this space, too, when it offered a way for indie artists to upload their own music back in 2018. But that effort was soon shuttered after the company faced pressure from its label partners who felt the move would cut into their sales.<\/p>\n Ma, in response to a question about what makes OpenWav different from other fan platforms, admitted there were competitors on the market today, but argued that none were doing everything that OpenWav is doing in one place. <\/p>\n \u201cWhen you come onto OpenWav, you\u2019re able to sell tickets and earn 80% of the profit \u2014 20% [goes to] the platform enabling you to sell tickets to your shows,\u201d he said. \u201cEveryone that buys a ticket goes into the event chat, like a Discord, and you\u2019re able to literally communicate and integrate and network with the very people that are buying the tickets to your shows,\u201d Ma continued. \u201cThen you\u2019re actually able to drop merch in that same community chat with zero upfront costs, no inventory, global dropshipping.\u201d<\/p>\n Artists on the platform would also own their audience, like fans\u2019 email addresses and phone numbers. <\/p>\n The platform allows artists to use AI to design their merch, and both Jean and Ma expressed enthusiasm about the technology. Jean noted that AI can help musical artists create more than before, and Ma pointed out that even record producer and songwriter Timbaland has been using the AI music service Suno like a sampler to help him do more with his existing music.<\/p>\n In OpenWav, they plan to use AI to help artists the way a manager could, by suggesting things like tour locations or merch ideas, as well as providing tools to make album art or lyric videos, for example.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we see with AI is that AI is going to be your best friend as an artist,\u201d said Ma, who said some AI features would arrive in the app\u2019s \u201cphase two.\u201d In the meantime, OpenWav is available on iOS and Android devices for consumers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Grammy Award-winning musician, composer, and producer Wyclef Jean says the music industry is broken, which is why he\u2019s now involved with a startup, OpenWav, that\u2019s looking to give the power back to the artists. Through the OpenWav app, launched over the summer, artists can drop new music and exclusives, connect directly with fans, sell merch,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20649,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[4563,2157,2380,270,1545,686,12696],"class_list":{"0":"post-20648","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-aims","9":"tag-app","10":"tag-broken","11":"tag-change","12":"tag-industry","13":"tag-music","14":"tag-openwavs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20648\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 27-29, 2025<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n